Last week, The Heritage Foundation mourned the loss its founder, who had a major influence throughout the Christian right that Hillary Clinton called the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” to which I was, and remain, a proud member. Edwin J. Feulner Jr. and Paul Weyrich were principals in laying that foundation, with generous backing from other conservative leaders.  

Heritage gained a major following during the Reagan administration, when I first met Dr. Feulner and spoke in Heritage conferences about our negotiations with the Soviet Union and our defense of then-President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which gave us enormous negotiating leverage, leading to major reductions in offensive nuclear weapons.

Subsequently, I enjoyed his steady backing, especially while serving as SDI director under President George H.W. Bush and initiating a major effort to build a modern theater missile defense (TMD) capability following the Patriot-Scud battles during the Gulf War. Among those initiatives were the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the Navy’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems.

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